The findings of the Terrans show that it is the goal of the strangers who have penetrated the sun with their nail-shaped spaceships, to remove ARCHETIM’S body from Sol. They have failed in their first experiment, which gives the Terrans time to do something about these operations. Reginald Bull goes personally to the solar research station AMATERASU. He calls for mutant support from the TIPI. They put him in contact with the telepath Shanda Sarmotte, born in the Stardust system, who is currently located in rescue operations in areas affected by meteorite impacts and other disaster districts in Terrania. Shanda is given a tour in the AMATERASU by solar physicist Mofidul Huq and opens her telepathic senses. She finds ARCHETIM and realizes that the dead superintelligence does not simply rest there in the sun - the body has become so intertwined with Sol that they have practically become one. And that seems to interfere with what the foreign visitors are trying to do.

Shanda ends up in contact with the foreign beings, but has little understanding of their thoughts. The strangers form a disembodied collective being and call themselves the Spenta. They are sun cottagers, beings that live inside a sun. They have a special "organ" that allows them to convert energy so that it assumes any material shape desired by them (ephemeral matter). The presence of a super-intelligence’s body is unbearable for them and they are trying to eliminate this disgusting pollution from the sun. When this proves impossible, they develop another plan: They desire to extinguish the sun. That seems to be possible for them, but only with reinforcement. For Bull, one thing is certain: If more nail ships appear, they must be attacked by any means. At the same time the mass production of artificial suns must be started, for the worst case scenario. Without their central star all the planets of the solar system would within a very short time become dead, frozen wastes.

Meanwhile, Shamsur Routh is looking in again on his daughter. Anicée is leaving the hospital against her doctor’s advice. He overhears a com conversation between Anicée and her friend Auris that she thought was dead, but in fact: She now has a biopositronic brain prosthesis implanted. Routh learns that the Augurs call themselves the Sayporaner, and that a special event was going to soon occur in the Terrania Zoo. With the help of intelligent gorillas, who he used to know, Routh discovered in their Habitat one of those buildings that the Augurs have built on different continents. He estimates that there must be four hundred youngsters gathered inside it. He believes that Anicée must also be near. The young people are talking about the "passage over the transit parquet "and of a " new formatting at the patronage world " where they will become the new elite.

As Routh tries to enter this so-called Gnauplon, he is stopped by an Augur with a thinly veiled threat. Then all the young people suddenly disappear when the entrances to the structure are shut. Apparently, they were sent off by some kind of transmitter. Routh realizes that he must be like a child to be able to take the step over the transit parquet and follow his daughter. First, he informs Henrike Ybarri about his discoveries. Then he has his consciousness partly stored away by his Memo Implant "Puc”'- a prototype for a new Ara product. Mentally regressed to a five year old and instructed by Puc he is transported somewhere by the transmitter in Gnauplon.

As Ybarri responds, it's already too late; somewhere between fifty thousand to two hundred thousand young people in the solar system have disappeared. On September 12, 1469 NGE Reginald Bull holds a transmitted speech to all the planets, in which he informs the public about the latest events…